JANUARY 20179Technology, when invested in wisely, can open the doors to endless opportunities for procurement particularlyfor end users. Similarly sourcing activities such as conducting auctions, issuing request for proposals (RFP), consolidating vendor responses and awarding business have been made easier as well with technology. Many e-Procurement solutions drive collaboration within the organization as well as externally by enabling interaction with the procurement team. An RFP project team can now contribute to construction of the RFP or a bid document, answer vendor questions, and review and compare vendor responses all in one location seamlessly. It makes it very efficient to go through a procurement process to objectively select a vendor without creating a lot of hassle.Lastly analyzing spend to drive intelligence is core to procurement. Spend analytics tools have the ability to pull data from various disparate systems to create a powerful spend management tool. This tool can apply several complex algorithms to understand spending patterns. It can practically read any form of procurement data, cleanse it, apply the desired taxonomy and drive spend categorization to create views and intelligence that can be an eye-opener for any organization. It also helps identify true buying volume and enables spend leverage for better prices and contract terms. These tools come with pre-built reports that display pie-charts and bar-graph visuals that are great for executive presentations. Club this tool with a CMS and e-Procurement solution and you can drive better efficiency and increase control over spend exponentially.Tying the three (CMS, e-Procurement and Spend Analytics) together meticulously completes the procurement value stream wheel.· Contract Management System ­ Prices and contract terms are uploaded in a CMS. These are converted in to e-Catalogs or made available in a market-place like environment for end-users.· e-Procurement ­ Procurement transactions take place electronically in this tool. Users look up goods and services they want to buy from e-Catalogs or a list of approved vendors with contracts in CMS.· Spend Analytics ­ Slicing and dicing of e-Procurement data takes place in Spend Analytics tool. It helps us understand spending patterns. This procurement intelligence helps buyers leverage their volume and drive better prices and improved contracted terms.It takes a really skillful team to fit these three pieces of technology together but once done it can help organizations find the pot of gold, not just once but on an ongoing basis. Sunil Gupta
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